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A Word From Those Who

April 10, 2011 3:26 pmApril 10, 2011 3:26 pm

I’ve been reading various “news analyses” of the Ryan plan, and I’m feeling depressed. In the past, I’ve complained about false equivalence — of “views differ on shape of the planet” type reporting. But what I’m seeing here is worse: supposedly objective, even-handed reporting that actually prejudges the issue according to current conventional wisdom.

The stories I have in mind say things like this: “There are those who criticize the Ryan plan, saying that it’s too radical/goes too far.”

As a card-carrying member of Those Who, I protest. This is just wrong.

People like me don’t say that the Ryan plan is too radical; we say that it’s a fraud. The spending cuts are largely fake, either because they’re just magic asterisks or because they wouldn’t survive politically; the revenue estimates are fake, because they combine huge tax cuts with vague assurances that extra revenue will be found by closing loopholes. There’s no there there — except for big tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor.

All I can think here is that reporters are so deep into the Beltway conventional wisdom that this is a Bold, Serious Plan that they just tune out the people saying that no, it’s not.

And what makes this especially bad is the fact John Cole points out, that the people praising the plan don’t seem to have actually read it:

The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious? The math demands it! We need to have shared sacrifice! This puts us on the right course! It’s serious and bold!

Read any one of their pieces the last couple of days, and it was like conventional wisdom/villager mad libs. Actually reading the bill, realizing it isn’t serious, it isn’t bold, that it won’t set us on the right path because it gives away as much in taxes as it cuts from the needy, realizing the only people sacrificing are the poor while the well-off are lavished with trillions in tax cuts- well, doing that and actually thinking, like Bruce Bartlett, James Fallows, Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, and others managed to do, that would be just way too much work.

I like that phrase, conventional wisdom mad libs.

Anyway, no, I don’t think the plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.